Larger Latino populations are linked to smaller knowledge gaps between citizen and non-citizen Latinos.
*So larger clusters of Latino population result in higher rates of knowledge of politics and political processes. Let’s call it political assimilation. This is an important idea when we talk about Latino political participation. VL
By Brittany N. Perry and Christopher D. DeSante, London School of Economics and Political Science
Does the context in which people live affect how much they know about politics? While it is not new to political science, work on the effects of context and geography on political behavior has become more common. Extensive research has shown that individual-level traits affect political engagement, i.e. those residents who are older, wealthier, better educated or are citizens are far more likely to be politically active. But scholars have also considered how one’s environment figures into the participation equation. While many have found evidence showing that certain kinds of context matter (information or media market, homogeneity of neighborhood, etc.), few have directly tested the interaction between contextual and individual-level variables and how these interactions drive behavior. This new research presents a first step in this process by assessing how context affects the acquisition of political knowledge.
[pullquote]”… while all Latinos will benefit from increases in co-ethnic population size in their counties, non-citizens will benefit to a greater degree.”[/pullquote]Our analysis shows that increases in co-ethnic (Latino) population size decrease political knowledge gaps between citizen and non-citizen Latinos in a given place. The primary implication is that contextual changes in American communities may be reducing barriers and costs to political knowledge acquisition, which may, in turn, trigger higher Latino citizen turnout rates and higher non-citizen engagement in non-electoral politics, including registration and get-out-the-vote drives.
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[Photo by Kevin Coles/Flickr]
